Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome

This text explores the definition and function of colour in Rome during the early Empire.

Mark Bradley (Author)

9780521110426, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 November 2009

282 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

The study of colour has become familiar territory in anthropology, linguistics, art history and archaeology. Classicists, however, have traditionally subordinated the study of colour to form. By drawing together evidence from contemporary philosophers, elegists, epic writers, historians and satirists, Mark Bradley reinstates colour as an essential informative unit for the classification and evaluation of the Roman world. He also demonstrates that the questions of what colour was and how it functioned - as well as how it could be misused and misunderstood - were topics of intellectual debate in early imperial Rome. Suggesting strategies for interpreting Roman expressions of colour in Latin texts, Dr Bradley offers alternative approaches to understanding the relationship between perception and knowledge in Roman elite thought. In doing so, he highlights the fundamental role that colour performed in the realms of communication and information, and its intellectual contribution to contemporary discussions of society, politics and morality.

Introduction
1. The rainbow
2. Lucretius and the philosophy of color
3. Pliny the Elder and the unnatural history of color
4. Color and rhetoric
5. The natural body
6. The unnatural body
7. Purple
Conclusion: colours triumphant
Envoi: Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 2.26.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]